Torrent front end Popcorn Time made streaming movies free and easy, so of course it's gone

For about four days "Popcorn Time" lived, opening an easy-access door to streaming movies via torrents, but now it's gone. Aggregating info from APIs (YIFY for torrents, OpenSubtitles for subs and TheMovieDB for metadata) its developers quickly pushed out open source apps for Linux, OS X and Windows. The team explained that it's meant to be as easy as using Netflix, and insisted no legal problems were incoming because it didn't host any content locally or charge anything. Whether Hollywood studios agreed (doubtful) won't be known, as a "Goodbye" statement on the Popcorn Time website says the project is over "because we need to move on with our lives." If this sounds like a dream setup however, all is not lost -- TorrentFreak has heard from the YTS movie torrent site that it's picking up the baton and expects to release an installer "shortly."

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Source: TechCrunch, Popcorn Time (1), (2), TorrentFreak

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William Shatner: Of course there's alien life

You know he's right.

(Credit:Strombo/YouTube; screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

When scientists speak about space and the world out there, it's always worth a listen.

But they're scientists. They have a vested interest in being right. More interesting, perhaps, are the people who seem to have an unalienable instinct for the truths of existence.

William Shatner is surely one of these people. Not merely for his portrayals of Capt. James T. Kirk and the Priceline Negotiator, but for his extraterrestrial nose for truth when he played Denny Crane in "Boston Legal."

Shatner has now offered his definitive view on alien life.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, he offered this: "I don't think there is any doubt there is life in the universe, yes. I don't think there is any question."

But what can possibly deliver such certainty to the Shatner mind? Math, that's what.

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"The mathematics involved -- what have they just discovered, 730,000 new planets the other day? -- mathematically it has to be," he said.

Yes, it's hard to imagine that of all the newly discovered worlds out there (NASA recently announced 715 new planets -- and each potentially represents hundreds more), at least one wouldn't have small green people or hieroglyphically nasty-looking 10-armed beings with a twisted sense of humor.

But that's the problem with alien life, isn't it? We keep thinking of it as something that is akin to our own. Yet, as Professor Michio Kaku told Big Think earlier this week: "When we look at aliens in the movies, we're basically projecting our own consciousness."

Shatner seems to agree with the professor. Speaking of what form alien life might take, he said: "Just how it happens we don't know yet, though I'm sure we'll know soon."

But he's declared himself and that's enough. There is alien life. It is out there. It may not be as we know it.

Soon, though, we may know something. That will at least make our own mundane existence more interesting.

Topics: Random Tags: Technically Incorrect, Star Trek, aliens, William Shatner

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